‘It’s not your fault, Ned. I know what Anna was like. A whirlwind. If you had tried to help she would have said you were getting in the way, poking your nose where it shouldn’t be.’

‘I know, I know,’ the older man sighed. ‘It’s just, you always think of these things when it’s too late, don’t you?’

You certainly do, thought Rob, having an intimate acquaintance himself with hindsight and its pitfalls.

Elle and Penny weren’t exactly getting much work done down on the beach. In fact, prompted by an excess of energy, Elle was running in and out of the tiny waves, the bottom of her dress soaked and clinging to her legs.

‘Come on!’ she called back to her sister. ‘The water’s actually OK.’

Penny tentatively came up to the water’s edge, then backed off with a shriek when Elle began to kick water at her, then gave herself up to the silliness. Rob arrived to see the two sisters fully clothed, waist deep in water, trying to dunk the other under the waves.

He watched for a minute then yelled: ‘Am I in time to stop a murder?’

The looks on the girl’s faces were priceless when they saw him.

‘Crikey,’ Penny giggled. ‘What were we at, playing like a couple of toddlers? I think the past few days have gone to my head.’

Elle was a little shame-faced, then puzzled as Rob watched her emerge from the sea, his face solemn. Did he disapprove, she wondered? But he had always been a great one for fun and joking about. And then she realised, the deep seriousness of his gaze, the slight flicker of want: it was the look she had seen on seventeen-year-old Rob, grown into the plain desire of a man. She looked away quickly. What would he see on her face, if she could still read him after all these years?

‘Well, I’ve had quite a day,’ he told them, quickly back to normal, and proceeded to tell them about his errands all over town, and exactly what everyone had said when he told them about the fate of the hotel.

‘But we know how people feel about the hotel, Rob,’ said Penny. ‘That’s exactly why we’re trying to save it.’

‘Yes, but have you thought that people’s feelings about the hotel could be the very thing that could save it? I mean, this town takes care of its own – that’s what we do. We live here on the coast and we’re used to weathering all kinds of storms, no matter if they come in from the sea, or if they brew somewhere else.’ He smiled. ‘Like your dad himself might say, sometimes you need a little help from your friends.’

Some of the stories Rob had gleaned from the townspeople were astonishing, and incredibly heart-warming.